A large-scale overnight drone attack sparked a major fire at Russia’s Slavneft-YANOS oil refinery in Yaroslavl, marking at least the 10th blaze caused by drone strikes on the facility this year, according to The Insider’s count. Yaroslavl Region governor Mikhail Yevrayev said 124 drones were involved in the attack. Two refinery employees suffered shrapnel wounds and were hospitalized.
Yevrayev confirmed damage to the refinery’s infrastructure, saying debris from downed drones shattered windows in several apartment buildings and private homes and damaged vehicles. Authorities temporarily closed the M-8 highway out of Yaroslavl toward Moscow during the attack. Traffic was later restored.
Independent Russian outlet Astra counted at least five major fire sites and two smaller ones on the refinery grounds. The Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ also published videos showing the blaze. It remains unclear which parts of the facility were damaged.
According to the governor, the latest attack was larger than previous strikes. During an Aug. 6 attack, Russian authorities said 93 drones had been shot down, while on Sept. 17 they reported 65. The numbers have not been independently verified.
As The Insider previously calculated, the Yaroslavl refinery had experienced at least eight fires following drone attacks as of Aug. 28: on March 28, April 26, May 8 and 22, July 6 and 16, and Aug. 6 and 28. Another fire occurred Sept. 17. The latest incident was therefore at least the 10th at the plant in 2026.
The September attack forced YANOS to halt oil processing entirely, Reuters reported, citing four industry sources. The strike damaged the AVT-3 primary crude distillation unit, which has a capacity of 17,100 metric tons per day and accounted for about 40% of the refinery’s output capacity. Another unit, AVT-4, with a capacity of 14,300 tons per day (33% of capacity), was already under repair after the Aug. 28 strike. Together, the damaged equipment represented nearly three-quarters of the refinery’s primary processing capacity.
Slavneft-YANOS is one of Russia’s five largest oil refineries. According to company data, its installed capacity is 15 million metric tons of crude per year. The plant produces gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, lubricants, and other petroleum products. It is owned by Slavneft, which is jointly controlled on a 50-50 basis by Rosneft and Gazprom Neft.
There has been no information so far on the extent of the damage caused by the Nov. 3 attack or its possible effect on oil processing. The refinery itself has not publicly commented on the consequences of the latest strike.
After a pause in mid-October, Ukrainian drones have struck Russian oil infrastructure for five consecutive nights. The latest wave began Oct. 30 with a strike on the Novokuibyshevsk refinery in the Samara Region. A fire broke out Oct. 31 after an attack on an industrial area in Ufa that includes refineries run by the Rosneft subsidiary Bashneft. On Nov. 1, drones targeted Kstovo in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, home to the Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez refinery. The following day, the Samara line production and dispatch station operated by Transneft came under attack. The Insider confirmed a fire at the site using data from NASA’s FIRMS satellite-based fire monitoring system. After the strike, Kazakhstan temporarily suspended oil shipments through the Atyrau-Samara pipeline.
